Friday, February 23, 2018

Miles Johnston

Miles Johnston is a current artist whose art I love to bits.
He primarily works in graphite, but has also branched out into digital and even
oil paintings. Each of his pieces is just full of textures and details, and he
spends many hours working on them to make them perfect. He is currently an
instructor at The Swedish Academy of Realist Art, and has previously had his
work in various galleries. He has an upcoming exhibition at the Last Rites
Gallery starting March 31st. He also made the art for two Magic of
the Gathering cards, the Cruel Revival card and the Jhessian Thief card. I love
how his pieces are just slightly disturbing, yet reassuring at the same time.
It’s as if you can relate emotionally to the pieces, which brings comfort in
not being alone in the feeling. I also love how smooth he is able to make
everything seem just through different shading. The image above is actually a print I own, and is
the first piece of his that I saw and instantly fell in love with. He works
hard on his pieces and it shows with how well done they all are.

Both of these links show a time lapse of Miles drawing his pieces. The first one is a self portrait he did using Procreate, the second one is an older drawing of his using pencil. The second one was also originally created as a tutorial.

“The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life.” –William Faulkner